8:55 PM PST | September 20, 2015 | Marketing post | Monetizing Your Website HOW TO MONETIZE YOUR WEBSITE WEB MARKETING TECHNOLOGY POST DESIGNED TO HELP YOU MAXIMIZE YOUR REVENUE Hello again my friends. Today let's talk about the best ways to monetize your blog or website. Here's what we will be looking at:
Let's discuss each of the monetization bullet points above after we talk a little about what bloggers could do to be a little more helpful . You want to monetize your blog to make money and that's a great idea. But I don't want you to make the same mistake I did monetizing my own websites. Once your site is up and running the first thing that comes to mind is: How to make money with it? Things come to mind like Adsense and Adwords, the Google stuff. And that' good, the Google brand is trusted and we take on a sense of confidence and trust, but not so fast. There techniques and methods to making money with Adsense.
All it takes is to be sure all the critical points are covered and detailed for you. Granted that does require a little more work. I read a blog the other day where one blogger was putting his friend, another blogger up on a pedestal and showing his site's stats and all the money he's making from his websites with Adsense. It was an interview, so the other blogger was there confirming everything that was being said about his success.
But not once did they give a link to any of his successful websites, not once did they use their pointer on just one of his website to show his ad placement strategy, his content to ad ratio strategy, text over image strategy or what he blogs about. Never did they talk about which type of ad was making him the most money. That's information critical to your success. Without that you're still left feeling around in the dark for your actual increase in sales. Bottom line here is that bits and pieces of the information you need for monetizing your particular business is probably out there but you'll need to do a lot of research and a lot reading to get at it and to assemble it. Then you'll need to do a lot of testing. I'm not a Meany, critical yes, but I'm not a meany, and I'm certainly not asking anybody to do anything they don't want to do. I just wanted to touch base with reality for a minute. Because make no mistake about it, you're going to need all the help you can get for your website or blog. Each website, each blog, each blogger and each blog subject will have its own separate and distinct roadmap for success, it's own secret formula to successful monetization. This means you'll need a lot of ideas for a lot of testing. A nice thing about Adsense is websites with low levels of traffic can test for which ad types to use and where to place them based on current running results and start making money right away. It won't be much money money but at least you get to see some revenue starting to come in for your work. But once your traffic increases, if your adsense income doesn't, it's back to the lab for you. If you only want to make money from ads on your site, which is what most people prefer, you have to develop and project your own personable voice, your own authoritative knowledge, your own distinct and unique character and your readers need to get to know you. Your click through rates will definitely increase then. Once that's established continue to experiment with monetizing methods. And be creative about it. Don't forget I teach creativity here too. What better place to practice it than on monetizing your own website. In essence you're developing the system/process your website wins traffic with, and generates revenue by. It's really just a lot of little processes that come together to make up the sum total of the whole process that works for that particular website to generate income. First and foremost no website is going to make money without traffic. The key to all of the above listed monetization efforts is traffic to your website, and unusual amounts of it day in and day out every week, month and year. Without high levels of traffic you can only make money by knowing exactly what personas frequent your site and how to create sales funnels. Sales funnels tend to get more click throughs. I'm just being honest with you about traffic. I've given you some traffic generating ideas and training for key word strategies inprevious blogs, that will put you on track to generate organic traffic to your site. So you're cool for now, but you'll need to keep your focus on generating traffic your entire online career. Keep posting blogs and work your backlinks strategy. We'll be discussing other techniques for generating traffic very soon, including backlink strategies. I think I may have touched on backlink strategies in previous blogs, but not in detail like we will in coming weeks. Okay, let's talk about some site monetization strategies in detail, shall we: Local small business opportunities to pay you for space You can charge local businesses to advertise on your site. You just allocate a spot to them they like and charge them by the click (You simply create hyperlink to their business from that spot and track the activity on it. You can do that using Google analytics for free). Or give them a flat rate monthly fee for the spot. I prefer the latter, it's simple. You can have varying cost depending on the location of the spaces you're renting out. For example space above the fold on your homepage should probably be the most expensive rental space on your site. When your site starts to get thousands of unique visitors a day, you can go door to door in the business districts in your city and sell ad space. You can sell ad space to other internet business by putting the words "ad space available" somewhere on your site where it will be seen. Affiliate marketing products direct from a company This is a good one. You go online and find a product that fits what you blog about and the personas that frequent your site if you go to that company and ask them if they have an affiliate program. If they are not and online business, they be willing to consider developing a program based on your offer, you never know. I've heard of businesses hungry for an internet presence doing this. You may be the first person to give them the idea and they may like it. Always talk to the decision maker about these things. When you go to those lengths however, you have to deliver. Be honest with yourself, can your blog deliver clicks and conversions for this company's product? Your blog traffic has to be pretty high. And the personas there need to match their product. It's a great way to grow your business through other businesses. Word of mouth recommendations are good at bringing you more business. So impress these companies so they'll recommend your website to their sister companies. Affiliate marketing through an advertising network Another one of my favs. These networks sign merchants up and then sign publishers up to market their product. The ad network manages both merchant and affiliate marketer. The benefit to this is that you don't have to go out and find merchants with products for you to sell; the ad network gathers them all into one place for you to choose which products you want to sell. They provide all the links, all the display ads; everything is there for you to go directly to selling the merchant's products and making money. Another thing about this is that you can go through merchants until you find a product that sells on your blog. These companies make affiliate marketing easy but you still have to find the product that will sell on your particular kind of website. There are lots of ad networks around. You can choose one to work with or several all at the same time, it's up to you. You'll be using the same ad strategies with them as would with Adsense and I'll be give your those in just few minutes down the page. Advertising programs Google's Adsense is an advertising program. There are lots of other advertising programs out there for you to look at. These programs control who advertises on your site. Similar to Adwords, a merchant bids for a spot on your site they like, Adsense then charges them for every click your site sponsors and shares the proceeds with you. Now, since we're back on the subject of Adsense lets talk about the best ways to use it. I will assume you already know how to get setup over at Google with Adsense. Just follow the instructions after you get there. Okay for those already using Adsense or just beginning, here are some tips:
Overall Adsense is easy to use, which is one reason it's very popular. But if I may, I'd strongly suggest firing up a friends computer and going on your site to see what kind of ads are being delivered to your site. Remember, you can't tell what kind of ads it's showing people who come to your site because they're tailored to each IP address based on its search history. With one exception: Link Text Units as I mention they tend to reflect your sites content regardless of a visitors search interests. Adsense is in essence a computerized sales person who follows people around on the internet showing them things they've already expressed an interest in. You follow these tips, you'll make money with adsense. Do reviews for company's right on your own blog site for pay This one can be a bit tricky. There are sites that help you find clients for this. You'll need to be a crafty blogger to do this without hurting your own original blog traffic. Sell merchandise Here you're simply selling from your own online store right off of your blog. There are companies that specialize in helping you to get set up to do this: CafePress , Printfection and Zazzle. I make money at will doing this using my Amazon store. I spend a lot of time working out of cafe's and you get to know people in cafes. When I learn of something someone need or is looking into I tell them I have it. They, knowing me tend to go ahead and get it from my Store. I sell cell phones and lots of other electronics that way. Much of my internet income has come from sending people to my sites off the streets. It's really just a kind of word of mouth recommendation, with the difference being I'm doing the recommending. I've gotten marketing clients the same way. Word of mouth. Provide a blogging service from your home Are you a confident writer? If so this may be for you. You simply work from home by writing the blogs for websites that hire bloggers to write their blogs. Here's some free blogger templates. Here's a list of sites you can work for. Get into a blogging network that pays freelancers to blog A blogging network is a group of bloggers all working under one branded company. You're either paid a flat fee per post or by word count. I recommend flat fee. It keeps things simple and puts you on top when writing about subjects that don't need to be long. Blog for various websites that pay to have their blogs down Talk to people you know or people you don't know who have websites and offer to write their blogs for them. Charge them a simple fair flat rate so as not to make it complicated and to make it easier for them to take you up on your offer. Work as a consultant Are you really good at what your blog is about? Are you an expert on the subject of your blogs? If so you can offer consulting services to other people or businesses that could use your expertise. You could offer consulting services related to developing and writing a successful blog as well. Write a book or an EBook Do you have large following from your blog? If so you could write a book and self publish. Amazon is great for that. You could sell it there as well. It also brings more credibility to your blogs for some. Be a public speaker Offer your services as a public speaker at events related to your area of expertise. If you've mastered your trade you can join forums and take advantages of opportunities to be the speaker or guest speaker at events of your trade. I can recommend a book that I'm reading titled: "Speak Up For Your Business" by Michelle Mazur, Ph.D. Copyright 2014. This book will help you get your speaking skills up to par. Sell other peoples product on your blog for a cut This certainly speaks for itself doesn't it? Talk to merchants who sell at swap meets, or anyone who has products and offer to help them sell it on your site. Take nice flattering photos of the product, post it online with a link to your paypal account for them to order and pay at the same time. Paypal provides that complete service. I use the same procedure to sell T-shirts. Something I started and didn't finish yet. You can quietly speak with your local shipper, tell them you'll be shipping a lot of product and would like a discount on your shipping. This way you can even do give-a-ways as loss leaders on occasion. They notify you by email when someone has paid for a product they bought on your site. You simple check and verify the sale then ship the item off or hand deliver it when the person making the order is local. Then you split the proceeds with the product's owner. Thanks guys, hope this helps Gene
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Updated | September 19, 2015 | Marketing post | Content Optimization
CREATE YOUR CONTENT AND MAXIMIZE ITS POTENTIAL WEB MARKETING TECHNOLOGY POST DESIGNED TO HELP YOU MAXIMIZE YOUR PAGE CONTENT AND WEBSITE CONVERSIONS Hello again. In this segment we'll discuss content optimization. Sometimes called content marketing or inbound marketing. So lets get to it. Too give you a completed and rounded understanding of content development and inbound/outbound marketing strategies, it will require several different blog installments. I promise to cover the entire spectrum. We'll discuss the basics, touch on a few of the advanced practices, and I'll introduce you to a couple of free SEO tools in this one. You've probably heard the expression: "Content Is King" on the Internet right? Well here is another way to view that. In television the most popular shows get the lions share of attention, and therefore they have the potential to make the most sales for any given television advertisers money. Advertisers are willing to pay more for a spot on the most popular shows. And that's because those are the shows with the most audience per half hour, hour, two hours whichever the case may be. Why do these shows draw the biggest audiences? It's their content. They have the content that is most appealing to an audience during that particular broadcast season. These shows are generally very well written, highly entertaining, educational, news worthy or funny. But most importantly their content strikes a familiar chord with their audience. Websites are media and have the same responsibility. Bloggers and content will always be the driving force behind the Internet. Like a good sitcom writer, screen writer or story teller is to television. Bloggers provide that little something you were seeking, or otherwise not able to find. It could be information, explanation, education, training or entertainment. Bloggers are in my opinion the informants of the Internet. Sometimes it's a matter of semantics or context that has kept your understanding of a subject unclear to you. Then one day you come across a blog that puts it all into perspective for you. Bloggers are a friend in a strange place who uses weblogs to index information that show you how to do something otherwise not known or understood before. Readability score is a very important measure that bloggers use. Your readability test score should match your intended audience spectrum. For example: Lets say you're writing about toy safety. Though toys are used by children you don't want to write in language and context that a seven year old might read, you want to write in the 11th-12th grade level so young mothers and fathers age 18- and up will relate to. But, bloggers and other website writers/operators must optimization their content to satisfy search engines as much as they do to help readers. Search engines have rules for content. If it is to be recognized categorized and marketed by them you must comply with those rules. Otherwise how are going to get your content seen by the largest audience possible. Social networks are great for getting traffic to your site but you need search engines too. The problem is: there are a lot of rules, and most of them are multi-dimensional, meaning there are various angles to the rule. Interpretations can vary sometimes. This can be down right harmful to you. It's what you don't know that hurts you. Remember that from the hope page here? So you need to gather as much information about a rule as you can, once you've learned of the rule. Here is an example of what I mean by that: Take for instance the rule against keyword stuffing your content so it ranks for those keywords. Now we all know that you have to be sure your content has your key words in it for crawlers to understand what your content is about so they can index it. Lets say you're writing about a cake making company you own called "The Best cakes In Town". And in your company website's content you write a 1500 word article about your cakes. And you use the "long tail keyword" (key phrase): The best cakes in town. And you really want to rank for that key phrase because not only is it a likely search phrase that will be used by a potential customer during a search query, but it's also the Title of your site and the name of your business. This makes it multi purposeful, it confirms the search has arrived in the place they were searching to be. #1 Increased traffic, #2 it confirms your ideal visitor #3 it converts clicks into sales on your site i.e., online orders and deliveries etc. So in your content you find a way to use that phrase 200 times to see to it search spiders are influenced enough to rank you for that phrase. But by the ratio of words to key phrase (called a long-tail keyword) you've stuffed your key words and the spiders will penalize your post and rank you lower for your efforts. So not only will you fail to rank for that key phrase, but you may be penalized and down ranked for trying to manipulate the bots. The lesson here is to just make sure you're being honest as you write what you want your readers to know about your product, your brand and its values. The bots will know and respond appropriately. Their algorithms are advanced technology and l lot more so than you might think. They analyze your search term to get at the underlying meaning of your search in order pull the right pages from their index for you to read. Spiders/bots are powerful, complex algorithms that in all honesty; think. They're not self aware but they can do the math and you could find your site in trouble if you break the rules. Also, you stand a better chance of attracting back links to your article when its honest, authentic with no hidden agenda, and knowledgeable about cakes. Here's a tool to help you control the wording in your content. Don't use your keywords anymore than what is reasonably necessary in order to make a point during the course of writing the article. The bots will know where you're headed with it and they'll respectfully rank your article based on your sites link quality and authority within their internet index. First and foremost your content must be understandable. What you say and how you say it is important. If you are writing about the extinction of white rhino but the title reads "How to prepare a chicken dinner" there is an obvious conflict between content and title. Maybe you're eluding to them being killed because their meat tastes like chicken. Unfortunately designing your articles content like this is not search engine friendly because your head tags will conflict and confuse both search and reader. Not only that but the world knows rhinos are being killed for their horns, not their meat. Your title is just as important as your content. Giving your article, blog or story an appropriate title is the top most important part of optimizing your content. People decide what they are going to read based on titles and page descriptions in search. Here's a browser extension tool to help you with that. Works for Google Chrome users, take a look. The title tells them what the content is about. The title tells search engines in which category to place the content. When there's a conflict bots will decide for you and that never works in your favor because though your content will be made available it will be very hard to find. The accuracy of the content and its readability attracts back links from sites addressing relative subjects and information. So it all begins and ends with the title of your content and it's meta page description if you want people who are searching for the information your content provides to click over to your site. Identifying your audience is critical to your success. Google Trends can help you with that. Authoritative content is generally placed higher in rankings and gains more traffic than content that is not pointed and accurate and authoritative. When content is optimized for search engines and search result rankings it will convert to inbound marketing easier. Content is created for a purpose but if it is not optimized for search it gets no distribution and it cannot reach or be found by its intended audience. It is most important that your content is seen by it's INTENDED audience. So you must drive searchers to your site via search engines and drive your visitors interest by the sites content, which then drives your visitors to click your sites ads other product marketing techniques that are on the site relative to its subject matter. You can use apps like If it is not seen by it's intended audience it cannot attract back links and therefore cannot rank for its key words DUE TO A LACK OF TRAFFIC. Really in all honesty, Google places ranking and traffic generation for a website almost entirely on it's back links. They are what the spiders follow and how your site will rank from within a search engines index. Another problem with content that is not optimized for search is conversions; you'll have trouble identifying your personas. Sites that attract the wrong personas for their product will have trouble making sales. I will not delve into the science of personas in this particular post. I will most certainly address it in a future post though. Here's a little sample: You sell skis on your website, but you write about motorcycles. You will attract the wrong personas to your site if it's skis you sell. We'll get into the science of persona soon. Content should be aligned with your title, be organized, be valid, useful, informative and authoritative if your site is educational in nature. References should be used when appropriate to qualify what's being said when what's being said is on a educational platform or directed at professionals as an absolute. Smart content writers know their audience like the back of their hand and can develop content that fits them like a hand in glove. Of course this requires experience but once you learn who your audience is and how to write to them, you can increase traffic, back links and sales. These content writers know who they are addressing. They know what their audience wants to know, and how to present it to them. Analytic's are super important decision making tools, but nothing replaces knowing your subject, its audience and how they comprehend and digest the information that drives them forward to wanting more and to grow. The best copywriters and bloggers know in what context or nomenclature to write. In other words how to speak in the same language their audience speaks. Knowing your audience and how to address them is half the battle in all writing and in blogging. Lets stay here for a bit and discuss readers. Readers are your customers if I may put it that way. They are consuming your product, which is data or information in this case. So for all intent and purchase you could say they are consumers and therefore customers. Customers are the reason businesses are in business. For this reason I believe writers and bloggers need to learn about customer service values and techniques. If you've ever worked in a customer service position you'll know what I mean and how to apply it to your online business. Now, briefly lets talk about "Out Linking" from your content and your readers. Out linking is when you create a URL link from your content to a place away from your website. A hyperlink. When your content is distinctive, educational or even unique, out linking is probably not much of a threat to your bounce rate. Bounce is a time on site measure which helps you understand your connection with your readers. A high bounce rate means your readers came to your site but your content or site features failed them in some way and they left. Excessive out inking sends your reader away from your site for too many times and too and too long by feeding into their surf impulse. You should limit the amount of out links on your site or within your content. Also, excessive out linking degrades the rest of your out links which can downgrade your sites search ranking. Search engines will give your site out links a value. But that value is divided up among all your out links combined. So in other words you are rewarded by search engines for out-linking. If you have done the research on what you write about, if it is informative and presented well; out linking is not much of a threat because your readers will always return to finish what they started on your website because the information is either easily digestible or the information is not available somewhere else. Referencing and expanding information is useful and usually important to readers who gobble up information like a Pac Man. But you must be careful not to persuade them that there is more and better information on another site than yours. Read the entire information string on the site you're sending them too to be sure it is only addressing and adding to that particular isolated point within your content. Readers appreciate a reference and won't leave your site permanently just because you introduce them to confirming information that supports what you're saying about the subject located somewhere else. In general they appreciate that you want them to have more information about what they're interested in. But in many cases it's quite the contrary. You send them away, they get caught up in the other site, they may not come back to yours. So be sure you only out link (hyper link) to a site that is only addressing what you are saying in the same paragraph of the hyperlink. I don't want my readers dating other sites, lol. Oh by the way, an out link from your site becomes a back link for the site you linked to. Some sites check their back links, know who's linking to them, and will link back to you giving you a useful and do follow back link in return. This doesn't mean for you to go and disavow your no follow back links. Check with Google before you disavow any of your back links. Some readers are very internet savvy and will save your sight in a new window or bookmark it so they don't lose it when they follow a link you gave them to another site. I try to have all my hyperlinks open in a new window. That way my site is still within their line of site as they explore the other site I linked them away to. These readers are more apt to return to my site immediately afterwards or bookmark it if they've run out of time. They'll come back because of your honest efforts to be thorough about helping them get the right information for their needs. They know you're just putting their best interest first. In all honesty they came to you hoping to find complete and rounded information. So don't under estimate your reader. They are pretty smart cookies. They'll want to get back to your site finish up what they started there if you information is compelling and informative. I like to put my readers first in everything I do online of offline, and in every decision I make about what I write. I do that in designing content, the honesty and completeness of the contents information and in my SEO efforts regarding the content among other things. From my perspective they come to me hoping I have the answers they need. And if I can expand on the information referencing another site I will do that for their benefit. People recognize good work when they see it. They'll always come back to you if you do good work in what you provide for them. Search engines rely on key words to determine where your content fits in on the Internet. The predominant words and phrases called long tail key words tell the search engine what your content is mostly about. Upon registration with a search engine your website is placed at the end of the line in search rankings for the subject of the site. As it is called upon by searchers, search engines compare that frequency with other content of the same category on other sites and your content begins to climb in rank. That process speeds up if other sites are back linking to you. By doing so they are validating your content. Seasoned copywriters, bloggers and other web publishers develop a knack for their niche and learn how to present it to search engines as they're writing it, which saves time editing for optimization later. Okay, so lets have a look at some of the more technical aspects search engines will look for in the basic processes required for achieving maximum content page optimization. Beginning with page title:
Depending on your content management system (CMS) you can search engine optimize your site well into the 80 and 90% optimized range. Word Press sites are great for this. When a page is optimized at 80% and above you have a better chance of attracting back links. Your site/content is being seen by more people and therefore giving you a higher chance of being noticed by other bloggers and websites that may want to link their site with yours. This does not mean that a site will not gain back links just because it is not optimized at the 80% range. On the contrary, you can out rank a Word Press or other popular systems with other site systems when your content is good stuff. You will still attract back links, but sometimes at a slower pace. Drag & Drop sites are not as easy to optimize as Word Press or some other CMS's. *Note: Word Press has D & D sites available too. They are not quite as SEO friendly, in which case you'll need a back link building strategy. What ever you do, don't buy back links. Organic back links only. Buying them will get your site into trouble with Google. Your site could be black listed. The most popular sites on the web have back links into the millions. But don't be discouraged, those sites have either been around for many years or are managed by a marketing team focused on back link strategies and campaigning for them. And even then, it still takes years to get a million back links. More important than numbers is the quality of back link. More on that in coming posts. Also, just a reminder to look for more content marketing post coming that will address other key aspects of content management optimization and Inbound Marketing strategies. So there you have it. If you follow the instructions in this post your content and website will begin to clime in search ranking immediately. Alright, that about does it for this segment. See you at the next SEO blog coming the week of 9/21/2015 Best regards, Gene |
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November 2015
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Hello, everyone! Please note the dates of these blogs and apply them carefully as many of Googles algorithms have changed since the blogs were written for you. We make as much of them evergreen as possible so there is absolutely some values in them you can still apply. Thanks!
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